"Those who brave the cold might see up to 40 meteors per hour,
although moonlight will make faint meteors harder to spot,"
officials with the Hubble Space Telescope explained in a January
skywatching video guide.

The waning gibbous moon will be out in full force during the
shower's peak, but skywatchers in dark areas of the Northern
Hemisphere during the wee hours of Thursday morning might still
get a decent show.

Scientists suspect that the meteors of the Quadrantids are debris
from the asteroid 2003 EH1 — the same source of the Geminid
meteor shower every December. The asteroid itself may be a chunk
from a shattered comet that broke into pieces several hundred
years ago, NASA officials said in a statement.

The Quadrantid meteor shower occurs when the Earth passes through
a stream of debris from the comet. The fragments slam into the
atmosphere at 90,000 mph (144,841 kph) and burn up 50 miles (80.5
km) above the planet in a dazzling display.

The meteor shower is named for the outdated Quadrans
constellation, which is no longer recognized by astronomers, NASA
officials said.

"Located between the constellations Bootes and Draco, Quadrans
represents an early astronomical instrument used to observe and
plot stars," they added.

However, the constellation was still relevant in 1825, when the
meteor shower was first documented by astronomers.

Just in case you aren't interested in braving the cold, NASA is
streaming the shower for free online from Jan. 2 to Jan. 4.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has a
light-activated camera pointed to the sky to record and
live-stream the meteor shower during its peak.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing photo of the Quadrantid
meteor shower and would like to share it with SPACE.com, contact
us at spacephotos@space.com